In "Coming Through The Door Blasting," I will be taking aim at various video game issues, whether it's in the form of rants or confessionals... maybe a mixture of both. Consider it a series of video game related brain droppings (pixelated poops?). A lot of the opinions that I express in the "Coming Through The Door Blasting" saga (ha) will be reactions to what I've been reading around the net or hearing in person, so obviously there is a lot of generalization going on.
There's no rhyme or reason to when I will release each volume of this because I write them when I have some stuff I need to rant about and/or when the blog is low on content.
I Don't Think Dark Souls 2 Is For Me
I'll begin this with a full disclosure: I haven't played this game enough to feel like I can write a full review of it, and I probably never will. It's like a light version of a review-in-progress that will never bloom to a completed product. I would love to write a review of it, but I am just having an incredibly hard time getting into it, and some of that is on me and not the game, but I can't look at Dark Souls 2 as a masterpiece either.
I'm playing the PC version right now, and I've read that it's buggy in comparison to the console version, but since it's my point of entry on DS2, it's all I can talk about. The mouse lag is terrible and in a game of inches like this one, it's incredibly frustrating that you can't attack like you plan and intend to. The game is hard enough as is, this extra difficulty doesn't help because it's cheap. They also clearly want you to use a controller because the commands on the screen come up as, "Press A." My controller is broken, plus I'm playing on PC, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect developers to optimize their PC games for the PC.
But that isn't why I can't really get into the game, that's just a port issue (I'm assuming) that doesn't exist in the console versions. This is going to put me at risk at receiving proclamations from people that I am a "casual gamer," but I think I'm past the point where ridiculously hard games appeal to me. I grew up with hard games, and I don't know if it's just because I'm getting older and feel like I've done my time with hard games, or if I just don't have the patience that I had when I was a kid and could only afford one game at a time -- thus making me play that same game for hours on end, regardless of how difficult it is. Or it could be that nowadays there are so many games to play that it's hard not to be pulled in a million directions, making me dedicate less time to games than I may have in my younger years. Maybe it's a mixture of all those things, but I don't like struggling my way through a point only to die and have to do it again. And again. And again. There's a death penalty where your life decreases whenever you die, though admittedly you can get a ring pretty early that helps with that by only allowing it to go down to 75%. I still don't like the idea of the death penalty. The game is hard, and each battle is difficult, and this was just unnecessary. Keep in mind, this is the point where I will concede that this whole paragraph is more of a personal problem than a game problem, except for the death penalty which I will defend as being pointless and stupid.
I don't actually think the game is this amazing accomplishment in game design either. I think it's a completely solid Action RPG, with some occasional thrilling moments and aspects I admire like the multiplayer (which I've enjoyed since Demon's Souls). I admit that when you finally complete an area and get to a bonfire it's a rewarding experience. The combat is difficult but I don't see anything awe-inspiring about it. Block/dodge, then attack. Sometimes there are multiple enemies which increases how stressful it is. I'm not saying the combat is easy, I'm just saying it's not really that in-depth.
I read somewhere that Dark Souls 2 puts its best material halfway through the game. If this is true, that doesn't actually excuse it. A game is different than a movie. Slogging through half an hour in a movie to get to the best part is different than slogging through a game for 20 hours.
Please keep in mind before you read the rest of this paragraph that this is literally just me asking questions and pondering out loud. These aren't concrete statements, they are hypothetical musings. I wonder if the game would be getting the accolades that it has been if it wasn't for the difficulty. If games back in the NES days had the same technical advancements that games of today do, would Dark Souls 2 really stand out? Or is this a moot point not even worth mentioning because the point of Dark Souls 2 is that it exists today and promises crushing difficulty and it's impossible and just plain dumb to compare it to games of yesteryear?
I know that if On The Gamely were a popular blog I'd start getting a lot of hateful comments here saying how I'm whining or crying, but if I were to give Dark Souls 2 a rating right now, I'd give it somewhere between a 7 and an 8. This is taking into consideration the fact that I believe a rating should consist of how "objectively" good the game is and your own personal taste. It is entirely possible to acknowledge a game is really good while also accepting the fact that it's just not for you. I am like that with Dark Souls 2, but I still see some problems with it. I'm glad there are a lot of people enjoying it though and I hope the series continues and makes a shit-ton of money because the variety of games is nice.
So I Took A Step Into The Realm Of Battlefield For The First Time This Past Week
I never played a Battlefield before because there are already too many shooters and another military shooter wasn't that appealing to me, despite the fact I'm in awe of the destructible environments and think it could add tremendously to the experience. I actually almost bought Battlefield 4 when it first came out but my computer couldn't run it. I consider myself lucky considering the difficulties the game has had since release.
Regardless, since it's currently on sale for $25 I reckon if I'm going to get it, I better get it now. And getted it I did. I really dig it. I'm iffy on vehicles in most competitive shooters, but depending on the game you're involved in, they can help create some truly exciting and memorable encounters. On the flip-side, it can lead to getting completely dominated in the most frustrating way possible, but my experience with BF4 has been mostly positive.
I don't want every FPS to have destructible environments, but holy crap it adds a lot. One of the first games I played, I ran into a building, the wall got blown up, so I ran into the next room and that wall got blown up. This level of destruction wouldn't be at home in certain shooters, but it's welcomed in Battlefield.
I like the game looks, feels and sounds, too. It doesn't pass my favourite shooter (Killzone), but the battles are chaotic and intense, with explosions and death everywhere you turn. Battlefield and Call of Duty compete directly with each other, despite offering different spins on the military shooter, but Battlefield stomps all over CoD.
Not Every Game Has To Be 200 Hours
I'll try to make this one quick because the article is already longer than I intended, but I don't think every game has to be long, non-linear or open-world. I don't need a million side-quests and I don't need a lot of replay value. Replay value used to come from it just being a great game that you want to experience again, though I'm not saying that another type of replay value isn't a positive thing because it is. I'm completely okay with a "short" game -- within reason -- so long as it's a memorable game.
If Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 only had the campaign, that'd be a rip-off because even though I have turned my back on CoD, I still think the campaign was great though incredibly short. Two and a half hours is too short for a full-price game.
Ten hours really isn't too short. My favourite RPG of all-time, Parasite Eve, clocks in at rougly ten hours. Mind you, games were cheaper, but the economy was also different back then. I'd be completely fine with Parasite Eve being released today with the same length because the game was fantastic from beginning to end.
We, as gamers, demand more and more from a technical standpoint these days. Games are held up to different standards because the technology is so much more advanced and we pay for that. Unfortunately this means prices also increase due to various factors, so even though cheaper games would be welcomed, you just can't expect a AAA title to do that. At least we have indie games for an alternative.
That's not to say I'm going to bat for companies pumping out short games, and unleashing unfinished games and expecting us to buy DLC is definitely not on my agenda. Bravely Default had a pretty decent runtime, and I enjoyed the hell out of that (until the end, ugh), and games such as Watch Dogs will demand lots of hours from me. There are always going to be open-world/sandbox games and I welcome that, but there's also something to be said for a concise story. If a game can do all that at once, more power to it.
My problem with a lot of longer games is that the gameplay just gets boring at some point and I end up ignoring side-quests and just doing the story. Someone could argue that since these side-quests are just extra material that you don't have to do them, but in some games you could miss out on a bunch by not doing them. I can't put the amount of time that some people do into MMOs because there's a lot of "fluff" gameplay that is just trying to extend the playtime, like stupid level/world design that makes you walk farther than you should have to. Making long-ass hallways just to make the game longer isn't appealing. Doing a million repetitive side-quests is only fun for so long most of the time.
There are exceptions to this rule, and I can be hypocritical, like with my love for Diablo-style Action RPGs. It's not an exact science. I guess my main point is that developers shouldn't stretch out the game if it doesn't make sense to do so, because it actually has the adverse effect and detracts from the overall product.
The point of these articles is to encourage discussion, so please, comment in the comment box below or tweet me @ArtBathednCrime. Let's... get this party started?
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